The event that Americans commonly call the “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in October 1621. This feast lasted three days, and—as told by attendee Edward Winslow—it was attended by 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating “thanksgivings”— days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.

Virginia Thanksgiving, 1619

However, the arrival in 1619 of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group’s charter from the London Company, which specifically required “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned … in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

Berkeley Hundred was a land grant in 1618 of the Virginia Company of London to Sir William Throckmorton, Sir George Yeardley, George Thorpe, Richard Berkeley, and John Smyth (1567–1641) of Nibley. Smyth was also the historian of the Berkeley group, collecting over 60 documents relating to the settlement of Virginia between 1613 and 1634 which have survived to modern times.

In 1619, the ship Margaret of Bristol, England sailed for Virginia under Captain John Woodliffe and brought thirty-eight settlers to the new Town and Hundred of Berkeley. The London Company proprietors instructed the settlers that “the day of our ships arrival . . . shall be yearly and perpetually kept as a day of Thanksgiving.” The Margaret landed her passengers at Berkeley Hundred on December 4, 1619. The settlers did indeed celebrate a day of “Thanksgiving,” establishing the tradition two years and 17 days before the Pilgrims arrived aboard the Mayflower at Plymouth to establish their Thanksgiving Day in 1621.

Thanksgiving at Plymouth

Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the “First Thanksgiving,” including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and a Puritan holiday in Boston in 1631. According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, “the Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden.” Now called Oktober Feesten (October Festival), Leiden’s autumn thanksgiving celebration in 1617 was the occasion for a sectarian disturbance that appears to have accelerated the pilgrims’ plans to emigrate to America.

Later in Massachusetts, religious thanksgiving services were declared by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford, who planned the colony’s thanksgiving celebration and fast in 1623. The practice of holding an annual harvest festival did not become a regular affair in New England until the late 1660s.

Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them. Squanto had learned the English language during his enslavement in England. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit had given food to the colonists during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient.

The Pilgrims celebrated at Plymouth for three days after their first harvest in 1621. The exact time is unknown, but James Baker, the Plimoth Plantation vice president of research, stated in 1996, “The event occurred between Sept. 21 and Nov. 11, 1621, with the most likely time being around Michaelmas (Sept. 29), the traditional time.” Seventeenth-century accounts do not identify this as a Thanksgiving observance, rather it followed the harvest. It included 50 persons who were on the Mayflower (all who remained of the 100 who had landed) and 90 Native Americans. The feast was cooked by the four adult Pilgrim women who survived their first winter in the New World (Eleanor Billington, Elizabeth Hopkins, Mary Brewster, and Susanna White), along with young daughters and male and female servants.

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth painted in 1914 by Jennie A. Brownscombe

Two colonists gave personal accounts of the 1621 feast in Plymouth. The Pilgrims, most of whom were Separatists (English Dissenters), are not to be confused with Puritans, who established their own Massachusetts Bay Colony on the Shawmut Peninsula (current day Boston) in 1630. Both groups were strict Calvinists, but differed in their views regarding the Church of England. Puritans wished to remain in the Anglican Church and reform it, while the Pilgrims wanted complete separation from the church.

William Bradford, in “Of Plymouth Plantation” wrote:

They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they can be used (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to the proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.

Edward Winslow, in “Mourt’s Relation” wrote:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

The Pilgrims held a true Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 following a fast, and a refreshing 14-day rain which resulted in a larger harvest. William DeLoss Love calculates that this thanksgiving was made on Wednesday, July 30, 1623, a day before the arrival of a supply ship with more colonists, but before the fall harvest. In Love’s opinion, this 1623 thanksgiving was significant because the order to recognize the event was from civil authority (Governor Bradford), and not from the church, making it likely the first civil recognition of Thanksgiving in New England.

Referring to the 1623 harvest after the nearly catastrophic drought, Bradford wrote:

And afterwards the Lord sent them such seasonable showers, with interchange of fair warm weather as, through His blessing, caused a fruitful and liberal harvest, to their no small comfort and rejoicing. For which mercy, in time convenient, they also set apart a day of thanksgiving… By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine now God gave them plenty … for which they blessed God. And the effect of their particular planting was well seen, for all had … pretty well … so as any general want or famine had not been amongst them since to this day.

These firsthand accounts do not appear to have contributed to the early development of the holiday. Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation” was not published until the 1850s. While the booklet “Mourt’s Relation” was summarized by other publications without the now-familiar thanksgiving story. By the eighteenth century the original booklet appeared to be lost or forgotten. A copy was rediscovered in Philadelphia in 1820, with the first full reprinting in 1841. In a footnote the editor, Alexander Young, was the first person to identify the 1621 feast as the first Thanksgiving.

The painting — The First Thanksgiving, 1621 — by American painter, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930) — The scene depicted here is a romanticized (idealized) version and not historically accurate. The clothing worn by the Pilgrims is incorrect. The Wampanoag did not wear feathered war bonnets, nor would they have been sitting on the ground.

According to historian James Baker, debates over where the “first Thanksgiving” took place on modern American territory are a “tempest in a bean pot.” Jeremy Bang claims, “Local boosters in Virginia, Florida, and Texas promote their own colonists, who (like many people getting off a boat) gave thanks for setting foot again on dry land.” Baker claims, “the American holiday’s true origin was the New England Calvinist Thanksgiving. Never coupled with a Sabbath meeting, the Puritan observances were special days set aside during the week for thanksgiving and praise in response to God’s providence.”

Revolutionary Period

Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682, and then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution. During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations.

Various proclamations were made by royal governors, John Hancock, General George Washington, and the Continental Congress, each giving thanks to God for events favorable to their causes. As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God.”

Current Thanksgiving Traditions

Thanksgiving is currently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. Created by federal legislation in 1941 and has been an annual tradition in the United States by presidential proclamation since 1863 and by state legislation since the Founding Fathers of the United States. Historically, Thanksgiving has traditionally been a celebration of the blessings of the year, including the harvest. What Americans call the “Holiday Season” generally begins with Thanksgiving.

Nevertheless, President John F. Kennedy, in an attempt to strike a compromise between the regional claims, issued Proclamation #3560 on November 5, 1963 stating, “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving. On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together and for the faith which united them with their God.”

May 10, 1869

DONE!

In 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act chartered the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad Companies, and tasked them with building a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from east to west. Over the next seven years, interrupted by the Civil War, the two companies would race toward each other from Sacramento, California on the west and Omaha, Nebraska coming from the east, struggling against great risks before they met at Promontory Point , Utah, on May 10, 1869.

Route of the transcontinental railroad

Along with the development of the atomic bomb, the digging of the Panama Canal, and landing the first men on the moon, the construction of a transcontinental railroad was one of the United States’ greatest technological achievements. Railroad track had to be laid over 2,000 miles of rugged terrain, including mountains of solid granite.

Before the advent of the transcontinental railroad a journey across the continent to the west and the Pacific Ocean meant a dangerous six-month trek over rivers, deserts, and mountains costing up to $1,000. Alternatively, a traveler could hazard a six-week sea voyage around Cape Horn, or sail to Central America and cross the Isthmus of Panama by rail, risking exposure to any number of deadly diseases in the crossing. Interest in building a railroad uniting the continent began soon after the advent of the locomotive. The transcontinental railroad would make it possible to complete the trip in five days at a cost of $150 for a first-class sleeper.

On April 9, 1869, Congress established the meeting point in an area known as Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. Less than one month later, on May 10, 1869, locomotives from the two railroads met nose-to-nose to signal the joining of the two lines. At 12:57 p.m. local time, as railroad dignitaries hammered in ceremonial golden spikes, telegraphers announced the completion of the Pacific Railway. Canons boomed in San Francisco and Washington. Bells rang and fire whistles shrieked as people celebrated across the country. The nation was indeed united. Manifest Destiny was a reality. The six-month trip to California had been reduced to two weeks.

Six years after the groundbreaking, laborers of the Central Pacific Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific Railroad from the east met at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. It was here on May 10, 1869, that Leland Stanford drove The Last Spike (or Golden Spike) that joined the rails of the transcontinental railroad. The spike is now on display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, while a second “Last” Golden Spike is also on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. In perhaps the world’s first live mass-media event, the hammers and spike were wired to the telegraph line so that each hammer stroke would be heard as a click at telegraph stations nationwide—the hammer strokes were missed, so the clicks were sent by the telegraph operator. As soon as the ceremonial “Last Spike” had been replaced by an ordinary iron spike, a message was transmitted to both the East Coast and West Coast that simply read, “DONE.” The country erupted in celebration upon receipt of this message. Travel from coast to coast was reduced from six months or more to just one week.

The Champagne Photo

An eyewitness to the driving of the last spike, Alexander Toponce, recalled the following:

When they came to drive the last spike, Governor Stanford, president of the Central Pacific, took the sledge, and the first time he struck he missed the spike and hit the rail.

What a howl went up! Irish, Chinese, Mexicans, and everybody yelled with delight. “He missed it. Yee.” The engineers blew the whistles and rang their bells. Then Stanford tried it again and tapped the spike and the telegraph operators had fixed their instruments so that the tap was reported in all the offices east and west, and set bells to tapping in hundreds of towns and cities. Then Vice President T[Thomas] C. Durant of the Union Pacific took up the sledge and he missed the spike the first time. Then everybody slapped everybody else again and yelled, “He missed it too, yow!”

It was a great occasion, everyone carried off souvenirs and there are enough splinters of the last tie in museums to make a good bonfire.

When the connection was finally made the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific engineers ran their engines up until their pilots touched. Then the engineers shook hands and had their pictures taken and each broke a bottle of champagne on the pilot of the other’s engine and had their picture taken again.

Each year on May 10th the National Park Service celebrates the driving of the last spike (Golden Spike). The Central Pacific’s steam engine Jupiter and the Union Pacific’s engine #119 are fired up and the famous Champagne Photo is recreated. If you are in the area on May 10th make the trip to Promontory Point, about 90 miles north of Salt Lake City (1.5-hour drive). Remember in 2019, only two years from now, the 150th anniversary will be celebrated. Even though no program has been announced, it is sure to be a memorable celebration.

Whenever I visit a place where my ancestors once lived I try to learn as much as I can about the area. On a trip not long ago to Plymouth, Massachusetts, I learned about one of the most fascinating living history museums I have ever been to (and I have visited a lot of them). I have New England ancestors and have traveled and researched there many, many times.

Although I am not a Mayflower descendent, I always wanted to visit the area. My ancestors are scattered throughout eastern Massachusetts arriving as early as the 1630s in Boston. Roger Williams is my 9th great grandfather. He arrived in February 1631 in Boston aboard the ship Lyon.

He was a preacher and a friend of John Winthrop. He preached first in Salem then in Plymouth before returning back to Salem. Even though he was in Plymouth ten or so years after the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, understanding Plymouth would help me gain a better understanding of him and his life in colonial Massachusetts.

Not far from Plymouth, Massachusetts is Plimoth Plantation, www.plimoth.org. It is a recreation of the original Plymouth village site. A group of settlers (re-enactors) follow a daily scrip taken from events on a particular day in 1627, just seven years after the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony. They are very good and stay in character no matter how hard a visitor might try to rattle them.

The recreated village is very true to form and all the materials and construction methods used to build the houses, barns, and church are all used with methods common in 1620 Plymouth. Some of the villagers are busily working in a seventeenth century sawmill, making planks for house and barn siding and shingles. The villagers can be seen tending their gardens and livestock. The villagers engage visitors as if they too just recently arrived in the colony.

Reproduction of a 17th century English colonial hut at Plimoth Plantation Massachusetts USA

Plimoth Plantation, more than any other site or museum will bring you closer to your ancestors whether they are original Mayflower settlers or arrived soon after.

Write about your experience and how your family felt about visiting this wonderful place. If you will in the area during the Thanksgiving period, enquire about having a traditional Thanksgiving meal at Plimoth Plantation. I promise you it will be a unique experience.

The following excerpt is taken from the Plymouth Plantation website, www.plimoth.org “Take a savory journey into the past. An evening of entertainment and hospitality awaits you as you sit down to a “groaning board” filled with the finest food that this season of plenty has to offer. Your Pilgrim hosts – residents of 1627 Plimoth – will spice up your dinner conversation with tales of England – old and new. Discover the table manners and recipes that traveled across the Atlantic with the Pilgrims, and find out about what happened at the famous harvest celebration of 1621. During dinner, you will be entertained with centuries-old psalms and songs and perhaps you will be convinced to join in singing a round or two.”